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Jackie's Journal (2nd excerpt)
(Tuesday March 17th, Player: James Beech, GM: Phil) San Francisco, CA Katarina met me at the airport this morning and we drove to the cafe where we were meeting the other hunters. I was nervous, but I did my best not to show it because I worried Katarina would think less of me. I like Katarina, but it can be hard to tell what she's really thinking. She's so poised all the time. I wished Vegas were with us, but they were answering another call on the other side of the country. The butterflies in my stomach were getting through to Rollo by the time we arrived, the stinging tentacles of his mane stirring restlessly. Once inside, we were joined by Luiz, Morgan, and Sorrak. Apart from Katarina, Luiz was the only one I'd worked with before. This time, he seemed sort of distant. I think I might have scared him a little during the vampire hunt last month. Somebody might have found that funny, a big Aztec warrior covered in tattoos, jittery around a teenage girl. It just made me feel lonely. I'd heard about Morgan from Katarina. They're both frost mages but even though their very polite to each other, I don't think they're exactly friends. The last to arrive was Sorrak. He's my uncle, Mom's younger brother, but I hadn't seen him since I was very little. My parents never talked about him. When I was old enough to wonder about it, I thought he might be a criminal, maybe even in jail. It never occurred to me that he might have powers like mine. He looked right at Rollo when he entered the cafe. Then he looked at me, his eyes wide. I looked away. Arcadia had gotten wind of a rumor about a haunting at the Paradise Theatre, which is why I'd decided to come. The Sight isn't always fun, but its certainly the right tool for finding ghosts. It seems the theatre had been closed for a long time, but they were planning to reopen it just in time to celebrate its 125th anniversary. A woman had fallen from some scaffolding while cleaning grime of the building's ceiling, and now people were claiming a ghost had pushed her. Unfortunately, at the theatre, a grouchy woman demanded we leave before we a got a real chance to look around. I took a quick glance with my Sight as we were bustled out of the auditorium. It was like nothing I've ever seen. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of different theaters all stacked on top of each other, sliding in and out of focus. In some of them, the place gleamed with gilt and was full of people. In others, it was a moldering ruin. In a few, it was on fire. Trying to see all those things at once made my head throb and my belly lurch. Even Rollo was unnerved, which takes a lot. I tried to explain what I'd seen to the others but only Sorrak really understood, and even then only after he'd taken a look at the place himself. His head didn't start to hurt though, so I guess years of experience are good for something. At least, I didn't pass out this time. That would have been embarrassing. After getting thrown out, our hunting party headed to the library to try and learn more about the Paradise's history. I couldn't concentrate, so I found a quiet corner to curl up in and waited for the pain behind my eyes to recede. Eventually, Katarina came and found me. She said she and Morgan were going to the hospital to talk to the woman who had fallen and Luiz was going to track down the reporter who'd written the article that got Arcadia interested in the first place. Sorrak and I just had to hang out by the theatre in case anything dramatic started. It was pretty awkward, spending time alone with an uncle you can't really remember. Sorrak asked some questions about Rollo, which I mostly couldn't answer. Then he asked some questions about Mom and I wished we could go back to talking about murderous monsters from beyond the pale. Eventually, he bought us milkshakes and we settled down to wait. Come to think of it, I don't know how Sorrak paid for the shakes. There's not a lot of money in monster hunting and from the way he dresses, I'm guessing his powers won't let him hold down a regular job. The ice cream helped soothe away the last of my headache, and by the time the others returned I was feeling ready for anything. The news they brought wasn't good though. Someone had killed the reporter in a hit and run and the woman at the hospital had been killed as well by some sort of spell that reached her through her TV screen. It was quite dark now and the workers had left the theatre, so we decided to sneak in and have a look around. We used the back door (Katarina used a spell to take out the lock) so we came out behind the old movie screen. There was a big silver mirror back there and there was light flickering over it, as though there was a movie playing on the other side of the screen, but when we went to look, the screen was dark. I followed Morgan up the scaffolding to have a look at the place the dead woman had been working before she fell. I used my Sight, but this time I was ready for the weirdness of the shifting layers. One point however, did not shift. It was a nasty-looking little gargoyle on the ceiling, holding a big metal ring in its claws. I realized that the ring was actually the handle to hidden door, a door through time or maybe out of it. Luiz seemed really worried that I might touch the door, which was silly of him but I came down anyway. The others wanted to check out the basement--apparently there used to be an old speakeasy there--but I decided I needed another look at the mirror, this time with my Sight. The same shifting layers thing happened again. I tried to focus in on a particular layer, looking for a time when the mirror was new, trying to figure out what it was for. When I did that though, something reached out of the layer I was looking at and grabbed me! Instantly, Rollo was there. He sank his teeth into the thing, which I could only dimly see, and it released me. There was a red burn on my arm where it had touched me though. It looked like a coil of old fashioned film, curling around my wrist. Rather than try the experiment again, I agreed to come along to the basement. It was filthy down there. Luiz found a secret room that had been walled off with plaster, which he started to hack through. On the other side was what looked like silver mist. Before we could get a good look though, something started banging away inside the old coal furnace. Sorrak pulled it open and suddenly it was full of flames, though it had been dark and cold. There was a person standing in the flames, a woman I thought, but I couldn't be sure. Morgan tried to grab them and pull them out, but the flames and the person vanished, leaving her with a nasty burn and handful of ashes. Then things started to get weird. Where the silver mist had been, a flickering projection appeared. It looked like twelve masked men in suits standing around a magic circle, with a gap left for a 13th man. Already on edge, Morgan lashed out and sent a chunk of ice flying at the men. It past straight through them and ripped through what we'd taken for mist but was in fact a fine silvery screen onto which the image was being projected. Three projectors were in the room beyond, each sitting on a carved throne. We scrambled through the torn screen and into the room. Inside we found the magic circle from the little movie, made of marble and set into the floor. There were old blood stains on it and mosaic showing the night sky on the ceiling above. The two mages set up a scrying spell, letting them see back into the past to the time the bloodstains were made. We watched at the thirteen men chanted and sacrificed three children. A dark shape, indistinct but menacing appeared in the center of the circle. The men spoke to it. I couldn't understand their words, but Katarina used a second spell to translate. Keeping both spells running in that shifting place must have be a huge effort. I saw a thin trickle of blood escape her left nostril. The thing in the circle looked much more powerful than the spirits I usually see, not godly powerful but close. It called itself the Dweller and told the masked men that it would teach them how to ascend and join the Keepers and the Gate. Then it handed them a silvery book and, with a gesture, created the star map on the ceiling before vanishing. We checked the star map with Morgan's phone and learned that stars would be in that pattern on Saturday when the theatre reopened. This would be the first time that pattern appeared for more than sixty years. The rest of the hunters were pretty convinced that one of the men in the masks had to be this guy called Richard Jacobs, who apparently owned the theatre or something. I think we must have found out about that during my nap at the library. Anyway, we went to his house and narrowly managed to dodge his security. Inside, we found him in another magic circle, made to look exactly like the one at the theatre, and muttering to himself. From his muttering, we gathered that the opening night audience at the Paradise Theatre were going to become a mass sacrifice to fuel Jacobs' ascension. I think he'd been trying to set things up so he could do the ritual remotely, but from the way he was grumbling, I don't think it was going very well. He also had a silvery book with him. That was enough for us. Katarina trapped Jacobs fast in a block of ice, but he turned out to be a powerful necromancer. Without even any foci, he withered poor Katarina's arm with a bolt of black lightning and started draining our lives away to heal his wounds. Luiz tried to hack at Jacobs with his club-sword, but the ice got in the way. Rollo's claws passed straight through the ice and tore bloody gashes in the old man's chest. Enraged, he sent more black lightning after me. Rollo sprang at me, bowling me out of the way, but the lighting curved around like a snake. Just in time, Morgan threw up a shield of blue light and sent the withering spell bouncing back at Jacobs. I watched as part of his face shriveled and fell off. Wasting no time, Sorrak pulled out a revolver and put two rounds of some sort of mental energy bullet into the necromancer. Katarina made her ice clamp down, vise-like, crushing his ribs. Even with so, it looked Jacobs' magic might save him, until Luiz got him. The blow from the club-sword broke the old man's spine and sliced through most of his neck. We didn't wait around for the police to show up, but grabbed the book and ran. We decided that both the book and the Paradise Theatre needed to be burned. I'm sure the artsy types who bought the place will be sad, but the place was too unstable, even with out sorcerers messing around. Better sad than eaten by some monster lurking in a crack in space-time. Now I'm back at the airport. Sorrak was the one to drop me off because Katarina's arm is still hurting her. He told me I should write to Mom. I told him he was a fine one to talk. He laughed ruefully and reached out like he was going to ruffle my hair, then seemed to change his mind. I'm rubbing at my eyes as I write this, trying to stay awake. Rollo might guard against anything trying to sneak up on me, but he won't do a thing to stop me missing my flight. Besides, I worry about what I'll see when I close my eyes. Men in masks? A burning woman? Children with their throats cut? So I sit here and write and wait for the plane to take me back to Vegas.